THE MINSTER.
Speak low! The place is holy to the breath
Of awful harmonies, of whisper’d prayer:
Tread lightly!—for the sanctity of death
Broods with a voiceless influence on the air,
Stern, yet serene!—a reconciling spell,
Each troubled billow of the soul to quell.
Leave me to linger silently awhile!
—Not for the light that pours its fervid streams
Of rainbow glory down through arch and aisle,
Kindling old banners into haughty gleams,
Flushing proud shrines, or by some warrior’s tomb
Dying away in clouds of gorgeous gloom:
Not for rich music, though in triumph pealing,
Mighty as forest-sounds when winds are high;
Nor yet for torch, and cross, and stole, revealing
Through incense-mists their sainted pageantry,—
Though o’er the spirit each hath charm and power,
Yet not for these I ask one lingering hour.
But by strong sympathies, whose silver cord
Links me to mortal weal, my soul is bound;
Thoughts of the human hearts, that here have pour’d
Their anguish forth, are with me and around;
I look back on the pangs, the burning tears,
Known to these altars of a thousand years.
Send up a murmur from the dust, Remorse!
That here hast bow’d with ashes on thy head;
And thou, still battling with the tempest’s force—
Thou, whose bright spirit through all time has bled—
Speak, wounded Love! if penance here, or prayer,
Hath laid one haunting shadow of despair?
No voice, no breath!—of conflicts past, no trace!
—Doth not this hush give answer to my quest?
Surely the dread religion of the place
By every grief hath made its might confest!—
Oh! that within my heart I could but keep
Holy to heaven, a spot thus pure, and still, and deep!
THE SONG OF NIGHT.[378]
“O night,
And storm, and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength!” Byron.
I come to thee, O Earth!
With all my gifts!—for every flower sweet dew
In bell, and urn, and chalice, to renew
The glory of its birth.
Not one which glimmering lies
Far amidst folding hills, or forest leaves,
But, through its veins of beauty, so receives
A spirit of fresh dyes.
I come with every star;
Making thy streams, that on their noon-day track,
Give but the moss, the reed, the lily back,
Mirrors of worlds afar.
I come with peace,—I shed
Sleep through thy wood-walks, o’er the honey-bee,
The lark’s triumphant voice, the fawn’s young glee,
The hyacinth’s meek head.
On my own heart I lay
The weary babe; and sealing with a breath
Its eyes of love, send fairy dreams, beneath
The shadowing lids to play.
I come with mightier things!
Who calls me silent? I have many tones—
The dark skies thrill with low mysterious moans,
Borne on my sweeping wings.
I waft them not alone
From the deep organ of the forest shades,
Or buried streams, unheard amidst their glades
Till the bright day is done;
But in the human breast
A thousand still small voices I awake,
Strong, in their sweetness, from the soul to shake
The mantle of its rest.
I bring them from the past:
From true hearts broken, gentle spirits torn,
From crush’d affections, which, though long o’erborne,
Make their tones heard at last.
I bring them from the tomb:
O’er the sad couch of late repentant love
They pass—though low as murmurs of a dove—
Like trumpets through the gloom.
I come with all my train:
Who calls me lonely? Hosts around me tread,
The intensely bright, the beautiful, the dead—
Phantoms of heart and brain!
Looks from departed eyes,
These are my lightnings!—fill’d with anguish vain,
Or tenderness too piercing to sustain,
They smite with agonies.
I, that with soft control,
Shut the dim violet, hush the woodland song,
I am the avenging one!—the arm’d, the strong—
The searcher of the soul!
I, that shower dewy light
Through slumbering leaves, bring storms—the tempest birth
Of memory, thought, remorse! Be holy, Earth!
I am the solemn Night![379]
[The howling of the wind at night had a very peculiar effect on her nerves—nothing in the least approaching to the sensation of fear, as few were more exempt from that class of alarms usually called nervous; but working upon her imagination to a degree which was always succeeded by a reaction of fatigue and exhaustion. The solemn influences thus mysteriously exercised are alluded to in many of her poems, particularly “The Song of the Night,” and “The Voice of the Wind.”—Memoir, p. 84.]
[378] Suggested by Thorwaldsen’s bas-relief of Night, represented under the form of a winged female figure, with two infants asleep in her arms.
[379] Pietro Mulier, called Il Tempesta, from his surprising pictures of storms. “His compositions,” says Lanzi, “inspire a real horror, presenting to our eyes death-devoted ships overtaken by tempests and darkness—fired by lightning—now rising on the mountain-wave, and again submerged in the abyss of ocean.” During an imprisonment of five years in Genoa, the pictures which he painted in his dungeon were marked by additional power and gloom.—See Lanzi’s History of Painting, translated by Roscoe.